Word: yardstick
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...University of Chicago), but she also puts her money where her mouth and her mind are. She spent six years working as an adviser to the U.N.'s World Institute for Development Economics Research, trying to find a better way to measure progress than GNP. (Her alternative: a yardstick based on universal rights such as life, health, holding property and participating in politics.) She has also made frequent trips to India, where she advised programs that promote literacy and prosecute domestic violence...
...last week's accusation that American planes were dropping chemical weapons. The only way for the U.S. to counter such claims may be to slow the aerial campaign and avoid borderline targets altogether. The U.S. destroys about 1% of an enemy force for each day of bombing; by that yardstick, there remain many Taliban targets to hit--if the pilots can find them. But the targets' mobility, invisibility and dwindling numbers mean they can't be destroyed at once. A British defense official says that in coming stages of the campaign, days may pass in which no bombs fall...
...last week's accusation that American planes were dropping chemical weapons. The only way for the U.S. to counter such claims may be to slow the aerial campaign and avoid borderline targets altogether. The U.S. destroys about 1% of an enemy force for each day of bombing; by that yardstick, there remain many Taliban targets to hit--if the pilots can find them. But the targets' mobility, invisibility and dwindling numbers mean they can't be destroyed at once. A British defense official says that in coming stages of the campaign, days may pass in which no bombs fall...
Like virtually every other cultural critic, Yardstick can relate this question to the awful national experience of Sept. 11. Here we have an act that nearly every human on the planet finds morally repugnant. People are saying that Sept. 11 saw the Death of Irony, but Yardstick tenders that Sept. 11 also saw the Death of the Agenda. Who will be morally outraged at events that took place 500 years ago, when so many people were massacred just a month ago? Christopher Columbus may very well be a symbol of immoral behavior, but these terrorists are real and they...
...conclusion, Yardstick points out that nowadays Columbus is too much a symbol and too little an examined historical figure. Symbols are for newcomers and neophytes (for instance, babies have symbolic sight). Symbols have the effect of telling you what to think. Instead, Columbus Day should tell us what to think about. This October, we were thinking about boxcutters and anthrax and the little pocket of utter immorality in Afghanistan. This is the kind of historical bowel-loosener that makes Columbus (or logging in Alaska or animal cruelty or violence on television) seem like a pretty pathetic target for protest...